How can I convince my mum that I'm doing the right thing re-home ed??

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, some of you might know the situation with my daughter but for those who don't. She's nearly 6 and has some SEN's. She has very delayed speech and language and is about 2 years behind developmentaly.

She's at a private school at the moment, she's been there since she was 2. We've had seleral issues with the school, with them refusing to help her change for her dance lesson and her missing half the lessons as she can't change quick enough. They say she can and does sometimes but she's just stubborn.
They basically think all is fine and she's just non compliant, lazy etc. Not the oppinion of the Ed Psych who visited her at school.
Anyway, she's comming out at Christmas. My mum is devestated. She loves the school and keeps saying "Well maybe they're right and she is just being stubborn ect". I know she can be but I don't believe it's the right place for her.

She is very worried about me HE her and keeps saying "But you're not a teacher!!" I know that and I tell her that I know her better than anyone and I can give her 1 to 1 etc but she just can't get past the fact that I'm not a teacher.

What can I tell her to give her some understanding of HE and to reasure her that I am doing the right thing for her? Or should I just not try to convince her, and she can see how she's making progress?

I know it shouldn't matter what people think but she's my mum and I don't want her to be against it. I want her to trust that I can do it and not think that I'm making a huge mistake in taking her out of the school she's no longer happy at.

Her other reason for not wanting me to HE is that my daughter is bound to play me up more than her teacher. This is probubly true, but I could do with an answer to that one too.

Have you been in touch with any local HE groups? If there ar HE get togethers near you maybe you could persuade your Mum to come along with you. That way she would be able to chat to some HEers who have been there, done that, got the t-shirt when it comes to answering all the less than positive opinions.
Your daughter probably will play you up to start with but once you have found your feet she will soon start to respond to the incredibly positive input of the Mummy who has taken her out of what is a negative situation and is turning that around. This is really badly put but it's Friday night. :oD

hi mummyloves, so sorry that your mum isn't supporting you with this. fwiw. i don't think you need to convince her. as nice and reassuring as it is to have our parents agree that we are doing the right thing, sometimes they just don't think we are and never will. you have to be able to stand by your own convictions and do it for lucy rather than because you have agreement from your mum. it can be hard, i used to run every child related decision past my mum out of habit, she has experience and i trust her judgement but i have realised that, sometimes i think she is wrong and wouldn't want to make the choices she makes for my dcs. i make my decisions now and then i tell her i have made them. sometimes she agrees with me and sometimes she shows her disapproval but as long as i am sure i am doing teh right thing then it doesn't bother me.

I tried to convince my mum as we have always been very close so I guess I did want her approval. I have since given up. She was a teacher for 30 years and she takes my decision to homeschool my kids as a personal insult. After quite a lot of discussion we have both agreed to not talk about it - it is a bit of a white elephant in the room for us now.

She still says a few underhand things that I just ignore. It is like any issues the kids might be having are always because they don't go to school, but anything positive is never because they don't. Grrr! It can be annoying but I have come to see that the vast majority of people don't get what we are doing and that is ok. I think you have to develop a thick skin if you homeschool because most people will think you are nuts. Sad but true.
HTH
Chaley

You sound very much in tune with your mum. It must be hard that she doubts your decision. You or other parents at a local HE group may be able to talk her round, or you may just have to wait and let her see for yourself the way her granddaughter will thrive without school.

It may be possible to persuade her that the fact of not being a teacher need not be a hindrance to home educating. You could point out that the skills which teachers work so hard to develop are necessary in the classroom but not in the home.

For example, teachers need to be good at assessing the needs of children they don't know very well. Even by the end of the year, the teacher won't have had many in-depth one-to-one conversations with a given child, won't have seen how the child behaves in a variety of situations, won't have had the opportunity to observe and appreciate the child's non-academic talents. The ability to understand and develop a rapport with a child one barely knows is important in the classroom, but you don't need it.

Teachers need to be able to hold the attention of dozens of children all at once and guide them through tasks which are not of their own choosing at times which don't suit them. You, on the other hand, only need to engage one single child. You have the flexibility to change your approach or leave a session until later if it becomes clear your child isn't up for it. For instance, you don't have to chivvy your daughter into doing reading practice when she is under the weather, or hungry, or mourning her dead gerbil, or when she feels like dancing instead. You can simply wait until she's well, or feed her, or talk about the gerbil, or let her dance, doing the reading when she wants to. Your task is far easier.

Teachers have to be able to deliver a curriculum without detailed instant feedback from each child as they go. It's hard for them to know whether they are hitting the mark with a particular child, and hard to address the problem when some children "get it" and others don't. You, on the other hand, will constantly interact with your daughter and observe her. You know if she doesn't yet grasp the idea of multiplication. You don't have to decide whether to plough on regardless, so as to cover the curriculum and keep the attention of those children who do already understand.

I could go on and on. You need different skills to the ones a teacher has because what you do is very different to what a teacher does. Many teachers do end up home educating their own children. They generally report that their classroom experience is of little use to them when it comes to home education. If that is true, then it follows that your lack of teacher training and experience will not hold you back at all when you HE.

Thanks everyone. That's reasured me anyway, I'll try to convince mum but if not, she'll just have to trust me. She has no choice.

Good idea about taking her to some HE groups. I need to sign up to that website that gives you a list of HE groups in your area. It'll be good for me to meet up with other mums so that I don't feel isolated.

Saracen- there are some really good points there, I might let her read this. Very interesting to here about the teacher.

This page might help.

Hello, I wondered if youd thought about keeping a blog? You could detail your HE journey with photos and/or thoughts & when you feel confident, you could let your mum subsribe to your blog. She will get to see all the wonderful things you do with Lucy, without you feeling like you have to defend your decision all the time. This might not suit you atall, but just an idea.

On the subject of being a teacher, well I am a teacher with many years primary teaching experience & I wouldnt really see this as a great advantage with regard to HE'ing. Children learn in a very natural way at home when given the freedom to do so. It is completely different to teaching a set part of the curriculum to a class of 30. In actual fact a teacher who HE's might find they have to 'unlearn' some of their skills to be an effective HE parent, particularly if they decide to go down a more autonomous route.

Perhaps your mum might be interested to read a book on He'ing. I expect someone here could name an appropriate title.

Thank you for the link. I've e-mailed one of them.

Yamba- A blog sounds good but I don't really know much about them or how to start one. I can look in to it.
I have a HE book called How children learn at home. I don't think I'll let her read that as it says that parents are relaxed when their children can't read at 10 or 11. This would completely freak her out. To be honest, I'd be really worried too.
I think when you know that your child is intelligent, you can trust that they'll get there in the end. With my daughter though, I wouldn't know if she ever would.

She has gone down hill since starting year 1. She used to be able to write her name, now she forgets how to do it and always puts the C back to front and it just looks so much worse than it did. I'm hoping I'll be able to get her back on track.

The free service I use is Blogger by Google. Have a look at:

www.blogger.com

Another advantage of starting a blog is that you can subscribe to other blogs on home education and read about what other families are doing. The photos are as inspiring and down to earth as the words.

A visitor to your blog, ie your mother, would also be able to browse the blogs you link to. That way she would find out a huge amount about home education just by being curious.

MLL, I do not want to disparage your feelings, but I'd like to challenge your thinking on "I think when you know that your child is intelligent, you can trust that they'll get there in the end. With my daughter though, I wouldn't know if she ever would."

An analogy: most children start to walk around 12 months old. Some parents have to come to terms with their child doing it either very late or never. Should those parents do intensive walking lessons?

As a home educator, my challenge has been to help my DC become the best that they can be and want to be. If their legs do not work suitably, it is no good me wanting them to be Olympic runners. OTOH, if they enjoy running then it is my job to find ways to help them take that as far as they want.

Given what you have said about your DD, she may never achieve much in an academic sense (but writing that off at 6 would also be foolish - she might be a late bloomer). That does not need to stop her growing up to be a useful member of society. If your DD has "gone downhill" it could be because she has realised that she can never "compete" with others in the class. In your position, I'd see my main job as reinforcing the things she can do and only doing bookwork when it comes up naturally in life (i.e. with a purpose other than DD learning to do it).

I'd also read everything I could about the difficulties she has and try out ways of helping (e.g. coloured film for dyslexia) but without getting (or showing her, more to the point) stressed about it. She (probably) needs to learn to read and write so that she can cope as an adult in our society. It does not matter whether she can read by 8 or by 18. It is not a race and it does not matter if she does not "keep up". If you can enjoy books together that is more important than her struggling to decode text - she needs to see it as an interesting and enjoyable thing to do, not as a chore.

Thank you, SDeuchars, I was struggling to find a way to say what you have expressed so well.

Funny you should mention "intensive walking lessons." I was actually offered those for my little one!! The physical therapist explained all the things she recommended for encouraging my daughter to walk. (She had physical difficulties and was not interested in walking yet.) Then I asked her what she thought would happen if I did none of those things: was it likely that my daughter would eventually learn to walk well? She said it was, so I decided to wait. It was the same story with speech and language therapy: the SALT felt it was important to sit her down and teach her about the order in which things happen, but I thought she just wasn't at that stage yet, wasn't showing any interest.

It isn't that I'm opposed to all forms of intervention, only to those which the child doesn't want and may not need. I have asked both the PT and SALT for help in other areas where it seemed that my daughter wanted it or where there might be some obstacle to her development.

Interestingly, when people talk about accelerating the development of children, they nearly always justify it by referring to the child feeling left out or being "behind" in a school or nursery situation. But if the child is not constantly being compared to a roomful of others of exactly the same age, many things are no longer an issue. By comparison with friends whose children are at school, I am much less aware that my daughter is nine months behind in this area or two years delayed in that area. It is easier to accept her. That doesn't mean I am entirely unaware of her differences or that I'm pretending they don't exist. It's just that they don't dominate our lives.

It seems odd that we should seek to accelerate the development of children who are achieving at a lower level than others of their age, by driving them to do things they don't want to do. If you did that to a child who was average or above average, it would be called hothousing and most people would deplore it as stressful to the child. Why is it thought right to drive some children and not others? Is it because we want to make them all the same so mass education is easier? If so, then opting out of mass education removes the need to work so hard on making them all the same.

mummyloveslucy, why have you rejected state education?

From your posts I think it is the right decision to take Lucy away from this private school. They are not meeting her needs.

However many state schools are very good. Paying for education does not necessarily mean its better.

Very good points!

Reallytired- I haven't rejected the idea all together. I'm just going to see how HE works out.

I know that her school isn't the best place for her, which is why she's comming out.

The most important thing is that she is YOUR daughter and you do know her best. You're obviously doing the right thing by her in removing her from a situation that is having a negative influence on her life.

If it's any consolation, when I first removed my eldest two from school 6 years ago I had NO support. Not a stitch. I didn't even know if it was a legal option back then though I read up fast afterwards. We've managed happily because I know that it has been the best thing I could have done for them. All 5 of my children are HE and are happy. And funnily enough I do now get support from my husband and my parents, though pretty much everyone else looks at me funny. She'll come round eventually, and really it's your decision.